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As Friday last (16th Oct) was officially the day Wyeth became Pfizer, we thought it presented the perfect opportunity to profile what is now one of Ireland’s largest employers. An internet search for Wyeth will bring you to the new Pfizer page (link).

Sites:
Pfizer Newbridge -In their Newbridge facility, where we manufacture a wide range of market-leading solid-dosage pharmaceuticals. With close to 1,400 people, they currently manufacture approximately 10 billion tablets/capsules and package approximately 200 million packs per annum at their state-of-the-art 850,000 sq. ft. facility. The facility has seen significant growth since start-up with annual tablet volumes increasing from 0.5 billion tablets (46 million packs) in 1993 to todays current levels. The number of product variations has grown from 32 to over 1100 in the same period and headcount has risen from approximately 300 in 1993 to presently close to 1400. This facility has become a centre of manufacturing excellence for global and regional supply of existing product portfolios as well as being the manufacturer of choice for new and innovative therapies currently in the R&D pipeline.

Pfizer Biotech, Grange Castle -The worlds largest biopharmaceutical campus which currently employs 1,300 people. The products manufactured here include Enbrel (for rheumatoid arthritis) and Prevenar, which is used to treat pneumonia in children.The company has invested more than $1 billion in this ‘green field’ production facility in Ireland with the construction of a multi-product biopharmaceutical campus.

Fort Dodge, Sligo – an animal health company previously owned by Wyeth. The operation employs around 120 people and manufacturers a range of both modified live (MLV) and inactivated veterinary vaccines. These vaccines are for the protection of the client animal against diseases caused by a specific range of viruses and/or bacteria.

Pfizer Nutritionals, Askeaton, Co. Limerick – Established in 1974, this world class facility is the largest purpose built infant nutritional production facility in the world. The plant produces both powdered formulas and a liquid ready to feed range of products. The plant has an annual production capacity of 50 million kilograms.

Pfizer Ringaskiddy / Little Island / Cork City – Organic Synthesis (originally citric acid manufacture), including the API (active pharmaceutical ingredient) for Viagra are manufactured in this plant.. Cue many Viagra-related jokes! There is also an operations Support office in Cork city.

Pfizer Dun Laoighre – Established in 1970, this site produced 7.2 million vials in 2000. Since then it has steadily expanded to introduce new sterile products and a new 10,000 sq ft sterile manufacturing facility.

Sales & Marketing Offices. Both Wyeth and Pfizer had Sales, Marketing and Clinical Affairs offices in Dublin (Ballycoolin and CityWest) respectively. In addition, Pfizer have their European Financial and Shared Services (EFSS) centre base in Grand Canal, Dublin.

Into the future it will be very interesting to see how the company forges its future in Ireland.

Trinity Biotech plc is a public company (NASDAQ: TRIB) with manufacturing facilities in Bray, Ireland, Jamestown, New York and Carlsbad, California.The company specialises in the development, manufacture and marketing of diagnostic products which utilise immunoassay technologies. Trinity markets over 120 products through distributors in 80 countries.

The company was formed in 1992 and attained its first full year of profit in 1997. Trinity Biotech has expanded through a combination of internal and acquisition-led growth.

Through a combination of in-house R & D and acquisitions, the company has assembled an impressive product portfolio and achieved an excellence in developing, manufacturing and marketing quality products that meet market demands. Its product range utilises immunoassay techniques, which have been employed to develop tests in five main formats. One-step rapid tests which utilise the company’s proprietary Uni-Gold™ Technology, multiple tests on Microtitre plates, Western Blot, immunofluorescence and coagulation

In Bray you can find  Trinity Biotech’s central manufacturing site.  342 staff specialise in the production of the Point of Care, RIA, Haemostasis Reagents, Clinical Chemistry and Immunofluorescence ranges.

Schering-Plough Corporation is a pharmaceutical company founded in 1851 by Ernst Christian Friedrich Schering as Schering AG in Germany. In 1971, the Schering Corporation merged with Plough (founded by Memphis area entrepreneur Abe Plough in 1908) to form Schering Plough.

In March 2007, Schering-Plough Corp. purchased Organon International, the pharmaceutical manufacturing unit of Netherlands-based Akzo Nobel, for $14.4 billion, giving the US pharmaceutical company an array of women’s health products and numerous late-stage pipelines of experimental medicines.

In March 2009, Merck & Co. (aka. Merck, Sharpe & Dohme, MSD) proposed to merge with Schering-Plough in a $41 billion deal. This combined corporation would be the 2nd largest pharmaceutical company in the world. The proposed deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2009.

The Company has 4 manufacturing operations in Ireland:

Schering-Plough Bray (Manufacture of Veterinary Products) – In April 2009, it was announced that the Bray plant was to close with the loss of 240 jobs – the plant is expected to close by mid 2011.

Schering-Plough Avondale (Manufacture of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients, API’s), employs approximately 380 people and produces up to thirty active pharmaceutical products using multi-step synthesis, and is a strategic site worldwide in the parent company’s production operations. The most important product currently manufactured in Avondale is Loratadine, the active ingredient of Clarityn (Schering-Plough’s Hay fever Blockbuster).

Schering-Plough Brinny (Manufacture of Biopharmaceuticals) – The Brinny plant is Schering-Plough’s centre of excellence for the manufacture and quality assurance of its biopharmaceutical products. The main product for world-wide distribution is INTRON A (Interferon A) – used to treat various cancers (e.g., leukemia, melanoma, AIDS-related Kaposi’s sarcoma). It is also used to treat virus infections (e.g., chronic hepatitis B, chronic hepatitis C, condylomata acuminata).They also produce other biotechnology products for commercial use and development/clinical trials.

Organon Ireland (Manufacture of Gynaecological Pharmaceuticals) – Organon was incorporated into Schering Plough in 2007 and employs 650 people in Ireland in Swords, Co Dublin. The site employs the latest manufacturing technology and processes to make a range of family planning products and a treatment for infertility. The final products are packaged for over 50 countries worldwide.

One of the biggest advantages to being able to use a cell phone as a scientific tool is the ability for underdeveloped nations to have fairly easy access to the same means as those more advanced. Here are 5 applications already available for use in tandem with a cell phone.

1 – Temperature Sensor Tags

Using either RFDC (Radio Frequency Identification Based Sensor
Networks) or battery operated sensors; the temperature of an object can be detected within 1 degree of accuracy. Having this technology available using cell phones could serve to be a great asset to the military, geologist, or just someone wanting to know if their child is too sick to go to school. Because Sensor tags can withstand extreme temperatures ranging from -80 degrees C to 200 degrees C, a mobile devise might provide data for a condition that is too dangerous for a human to physically endure, provided the phone itself can withstand these conditions as well.

2 – Weight Management

With the technology to manage your weight on your cell phone by linking it to a scale, pedometer and the doctor’s office, it might be possible to get a handle on the nation’s obesity problem. By combining some of the more popular applications such as grocery shopping and learning reminders with SMS messages sent to your phone, this would create a fully customizable weight management system accessible 24 hours a day. One advantage when linked directly to your doctor’s office, this gives you a virtual telemedical experience.

3 – Ultrasound Machine.

The future of determining the sex of your unborn child might be in the palm of your hand. Ultrasound probes for cell phones are already available to the public, but it likely will still be some time before you can walk into your local pharmacy and purchase one for personal use. Washington University research engineers have developed an application that allows for a cellular telephone to act as an Ultrasound Machine. This is done by using a USB ultrasound probe.
The possibilities for the future with this development are exciting and could give underdeveloped nations a great opportunity for better care.

4 – Microscope

The cell phone finally can live up to its name, the “Cell” phone. Now it has the ability to do exactly what it claims. An advance in cell screening technology was born at University of California, Berkeley
and has landed a new home within this household mobile device. What
started out as a challenge from a professor to his students has turned into a device called “CellScope” and has the capability to diagnose and research worldwide diseases like AIDS, tuberculosis and Sickle Cell Anemia in places this formerly was not a reality.

5 – Heart Monitor

Microsoft has partnered with a team of scientists at the University of Pittsburgh to develop a heart monitor that is powered by your cell phone. This application will have the ability to monitor a patient’s cardiac activity and send information to the individual’s medical records and health care providers. It even has the capability to call
911 and alert emergency medical technicians in the event of a dangerous drop in activity.

Most cell phones now hold more computing power than desktop computers did just a couple decades ago, a new revolution has begun to surface.
With the ability to enhance rather than limit Scientific Research, cell phones use will surely grow and become a necessity for the field of research.

This post was submitted by Elise Degrass, who writes about free cell phones for Cell Phones.org.

web 2.0 periodic table

Life Science Recruitment launches its Web 2.0 Periodic Table

Life Science Recruitment is a specialist scientific and healthcare recruitment company based in Dublin and is the first Irish recruitment company to develop a portfolio of industry-specific recruitment websites. Presented in an innovative periodic table format (Life Science Periodic Table), the aim is to make job-seeking in specific vertical markets more relevant, targeted and efficient for candidates.

The company’s market research into recruitment trends in Ireland began in late 2007 and results from a recent online survey conducted on the lifescience.ie website indicated that 67% of respondents said they wanted to see less duplicated jobs online, while 73% of respondents said they wanted to see more niche websites dealing in their specific professional fields. The culmination of this research has been the development of the “strategic online presence” comprising 15 industry-specific websites and a Web 2.0 footprint made up of a number of blogs, combined with a presence on Facebook, twitter and other social media resources.

Each industry-specific website is tailored to the jobseeker; pharmaceutical.ie for jobseekers in the pharmaceutical sector, medicaldevice.ie for the jobseekers in the medical device sector and so on. Each website contains latest jobs from Life Science Recruitment, academic institutes and featured industry partners only, as well as industry sector overviews and career advice targeted to the specific end-user. These websites have an unrivalled presence in the search engines, compared to competitors.

According to Seth Godin, author of numerous best-selling marketing books and internet marketing guru, “Big companies, non-profits and even candidates will discover hyperlocal, hyperspecialized, hyperrelevant… this is where we are going, and it turns out that this time, the media is way ahead of the marketers.” Life Science Recruitment’s strategic online presence aims to encapsulate these three maxims as it moves forward with the changing face of the recruitment industry in Ireland.

The management team at Life Science Recruitment brings over 20 years of recruitment experience to the table, combined with an academic grounding in life science and technology.

Contact Information:
For further information please contact:
Eamonn O’Raghallaigh, Life Science Recruitment Ltd, 4th Floor, Newmarket House, Newmarket, Dublin 8. Tel: 01 6854545 / Fax: 01 443 0524

Websites: lifescience.ie / pharmaceutical.ie / medicaldevice.ie / alliedhealth.ie / clinicalresearch.ie / biopharmaceutical.ie / diagnostics.ie / scientificjobs.ie /salesandmarketing.ie / qualityassurance.ie / regulatoryaffairs.ie / qualitycontrol.ie / microbiology.ie / chemistryjobs.ie

Social Media: ScienceBlog.ie / Life Science Company Blog / Sales and Marketing Blog / Life Science FaceBook Page / Life Science Twitter Page

Propofol is very short acting hypnotic agent used to induce general anesthesia and to maintain patients who are mechanically ventilated. For those of you who have undergone general anesthesia, the milky white liquid is probably the last thing you see prior to being knocked out – as once injected propofol will induce unconsciousness in around 10 seconds. Due to its ability to impair memory while under its influence and its appearance as a white liquid, propofol is jokingly called “milk of amnesia” by medical professionals. Interestingly, Michael called propofol his “milk”.

It has several mechanisms of action, both through potentiation of GABA-A receptor activity, thereby slowing the channel closing time, and also acting as a sodium channel blocker. Recent research has also suggested the endocannabinoid system may contribute significantly to propofol’s anesthetic action and to its unique properties.

So What Went Wrong?

As with most cases of this kind, although propofol was the actual coup de grace, it was the combination of multiple drug interactions which ultimately led to Michael’s death. In a report released today, Michael was actually dosed with a 10-milligram tab of Valium (diazepam, a long-acting benzodiazepine) at 1.30am, followed by injections including two milligrams of lorazepam (a medium-acting benzodiazepine) around 2 a.m., two milligrams of midazolam (an ultra-short-acting benzodiazepine) around 3 a.m., and repeats of each at 5 a.m. and 7.30 a.m. respectively. That’s a lot of benzodiazepines!

Finally, at 10.40am, 25 milligrams of propofol was administered and Michael was dead within 10 minutes, most likely from respiratory depression caused by the interaction of high doses of benzodiazepines and propofol.

Alas, a totally avoidable death due to medical negligence on the part of a physician giving in to the demands of a patient.

- Eamonn

Ahhhh drink!

Hangovers International: (Country Term Cure)

Germany: katzenjammer, (“a wailing of cats.”) Sour herring

France: la gueule de bois,   Onion soup

Mexico: Cruda (“raw”) Menudo – Tripe soup with chilli

Sicilian: Sbronzo Espresso (and lots of it)

Polish Kac, Sour Pickle

Endeavours to cure ‘an poit’ exist all over the world. Whether it’s Ancient Romans deep fried canaries, Ancient Greeks owl eggs (and sheep lungs) or Haitian-Voodoo’s method of finding the last bottle you drank from and sticking black pins into the cork… many others may have scientific merit.

Water of course is needed to replace the amount excreted, bananas are good source to replace the potassium lost, and fruit juice to bring blood sugar levels back up and also other nutrients that were lost. Eggs are also a good one as they contain cysteine which helps to break down the toxins into the less harmful acetic acid that is lurking around in your liver. Other constitutes of a traditional fry do not help unfortunately and particularly won’t help the sensitive stomach. Trying to replace vital nutrients will help speed up the process but will not cure them.

A ’curer’ or ‘hair of the dog’ does alleviate the symptoms for a short while but does not get rid of them. When you consume another unit of alcohol the next day your body ceases breaking down the toxins from the night before and begins to work on the toxins that just entered your liver. So the relief will last for the amount of time it takes your liver takes to breakdown them down (an hour per unit of alcohol). The hangover will eventually come back to haunt you.

So if it’s Bloody Mary’s, Black Velvets or rabbit-poo tea (a favourite amongst the cowboys of the Wild West apparently), or turning around 3 times chanting “REVOGNAH” with a cabbage on your head; there is no irrefutable cure. But any suggestions are very much welcome.

One of the main suspects of a hangover and a recurring cause of the symptoms is dehydration. As a preventative it is recommended to drink water after each alcoholic drink; one to replace the water lost in urination (it’s slightly important to do this…) and two to give you a break for a moment to break down the toxins.

A nice way (if you like Maths) to work out what you’re doing to yourself if you over indulge (and a possible way to make you order a glass of water while waiting for your real drink to come) is to work out your Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) on an average night of drinking:

1 unit of alcohol is a drink that contains approximately 10grams of alcohol.
500ml can of average beer is = 2 units
12 % A bottle of wine = 9 units
Small glass of wine = 1 unit
Short of spirit = 1 unit
(To calculate the units in a particular drink just multiply the percentage alcohol by the amount being consumed and divide by 1000 e.g. 500ml can of Tuborg is 4% so 500 X 4 = 2000 / 1000 = 2 units)
Calculation 1
Work out the number of (standard) drinks you have consumed and multiply by 10. This tells you how many grams of alcohol you have consumed.
Example: Brian goes out on a Saturday night and drinks a silly 30units X 10 = 300
Niamh goes out too but is a lady and drinks only 15 units X 10 = 150

Calculation 2
Multiply the number of hours you have been drinking by 7.5 grams (the average rate of elimination of alcohol from the body).
Brian and Niamh both drink over 5.5 hours X 7.5g = 41.25g per hour

Step 3
Subtract Step 2 from Step 1.
Brian: 300 – 41.25 = 258.75
Niamh: 150 – 41.25g = 108.75

Calculation 4
Multiply your weight in kilograms by 6.8 if you are male, or 5.5 if you, are female.
Brian: 6.8 x 80kg = 544
Niamh: 6.8 x 54kg = 367.2

Calculation 5
Divide Step 3 by Step 4 to give your approximate BAC.

Brian BAC: 258.75 / 544 = 0.48
Niamh BAC: 108.75 / 367.2 = 0.3

0.02 – 0.03 Legal definition of intoxication in R.I. for people under 21 years of age. Few obvious effects; slight intensification of mood.
0.05 – 0.06 Feeling of warmth, relaxation, mild sedation; exaggeration of emotion and behavior; slight decrease in reaction time and in fine-muscle coordination; impaired judgment about continued drinking.
0.07 – 0.09 More noticeable speech impairment and disturbance of balance; impaired motor coordination, hearing and vision; feeling of elation or depression; increased confidence; may not recognize impairment.
0.08 Legal definition of intoxication in R.I. for people 21 years and older.
0.11 – 0.12 Coordination and balance becoming difficult; distinct impairment of mental faculties and judgment.
0.14 – 0.15 Major impairment of mental and physical control; slurred speech, blurred vision and lack of motor skills; needs medical evaluation.
0.20 Loss of motor control; must have assistance moving about; mental confusion; needs medical assistance.
0.30 Severe intoxication; minimum conscious control of mind and body; needs hospitalization.
0.30 – 0.60 This level of alcohol has been measured in people who have died of alcohol intoxication.
0.40 Unconsciousness; coma; needs hospitalization.

The body reduces its BAC level at the rate of about .0 15 each hour after drinking has stopped.

To calculate how many hours it will take for your body to remove the alcohol and bring you back to zero BAC after you have stopped drinking, divide BAC by 0.015.
Brian: 0.48 / 0.015 = 32 hours (dear god)
Niamh 0.3 / 0.015 = 20 hours (no longer a lady)

This is only an approximation, the rate at which your body breaksdown alcohol is different for everyone and the rate of 0.015 only applies to one unit per hour.

-niamhyb

Inspiration from reading a Times article recently and my own debilitating state post Mammy birthday celebrations, makes me soberly (ish) face up to why alcohol causes hangovers in the human body.

Headaches are caused by a lot of processes going on in your body whilst succumbing to the post pub affliction. Here are just a couple:

Alcohol suppresses the anti diuretic hormone in the brain. The ADH signals the kidneys to reabsorb water back into the body but without it the water goes to the bladder which is why there’s a constant flow of people to the pub toilet. The body ends up excreting up to 4 times as much water as it takes in; and to compensate water is taken from the brain by other organs (how rude). So your lovely brain shrinks in size (and no doubt functional capacity) and begins to pull on the membranes that connect it to the skull. Delightful. Not surprisingly this causes headaches.

When you urinate you also lose salts and potassium which are required for cell, nervous system and brain function. A deficiency in these produces, amongst other things, headaches. And of course not scientifically provable but memories of what you got up to the night before are possible contributors to the pain.
Eyes are the window to the soul? Well then it’s one blurry, sore, puffy sad soul. Alcohol in the body causes dehydration and dilation of the blood vessels. So the eyes of the post night out are dried out and bloodshot.

Approximately 90% – 95% of alcohol you take in is broken down by the liver, and the rest is excreted through urine, breath and sweat. This is why even when you’ve showered and avoided eye contact with your bosses they’ll still be able to smell that previous night’s concoction, which seemed like a good idea at the time, off you.
The outside observer of the hung-over individual may notice a multitude of strange behaviour such as, a Vampire-esque sensitivity to light, sensitivity to sound and touch. Also irritability and moodiness that resemble the Hulk on bad day.

One of the causes of these behaviours is the nervous system being hyperactive. This is because alcohol is a sedative and in response to this the human body tries to counteract the effects by making us more alert. So we don’t pass out (right away). When we go to sleep and wake up the next morning though, the nervous system is still hyperactive and this is the shaking and sensitivity experienced sometimes in a hangover.

And one of my personal favourites; the slow, brain dead, immobile, Zombie like behaviour. This results when alcohol breaks down our storage of glycogen (this is the glucose that is not used straight away by the body for energy). When it is broken down in the liver it is excreted in the urine so the morning after your brain and body are depleted of energy giving glucose, hence the weakness and slowness.

So using the shrunken brain that is hanging on by the threads to put one of those moving thingy’s in front of the other and getting to the cold-box-place where the food lives becomes a heroic feat.

Apart from the looking and acting like a stinky, crazy eyed, super duper-scary-crossbred-monstrosity, the rest of your organs are also having a bad day – literally as it takes up to 24 hours for your body to return to normal after a night of drinking.

Your heart rate and blood pressure are increased; your intestines have not been absorbing water back into the body so diarrhoea is a possibility, and the lining of your stomach is aggravated by the toxins and this send messages to the brain to induce vomiting to rid the body of these.

Niamhyb

Former Tour champion Greg LeMond has recently challenged yellow jersey holder Alberto Contador to prove he is clean after data published by the Festina Performace guru, Antoine Vayer, showed that he would need a VO2 max of 99.5 ml / min / kg to sustain the speed at which he recently climbed the Verbier mountain on Stage 17 of this years edition of Le Tour de France. In answering, Contador would not be drawn to the subject, giving the banale: “No comment” response.

Pantani winning the epic 17th Stage at Les Deux Alpes in 1998

To compare, let’s look at Marco Pantani, which involves the tragic downfall of El Pirata (The Pirate) due to horrific drugs abuse in the later stages of his career. I had the pleasure of visiting Pantani’s hometown, Cesenatico and visited his grave a number of years ago. I also caught a glimpse of the man’s first bicycle in one of the local bars.

The following graph gives an interesting view over power output over the last few years:

Graph showing winners and their respective power outputs

Here we can see compare the disgraced winners (Riis, Pantani and Ullrich) against the ‘Clean’ riders (Indurain, Armstrong). Note that I am utilising the principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ in the above statement!

Considering Contador’s calculated VO2 max of 99.5 ml / min / kg against Armstrong’s widely reported max of 85 ml / min / kg, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that LeMond is right to be suspicious. If we plot his performance on the above graph, Contador’s Wattage comes in at the level of the disgraced riders. The physiology cannot lie!!!

Taking off my ‘innocent until proven guilty’ hat, surely it’s onlly a matter of time before this Champion-elect is found guilty, especially considering his gargantuan exploits the day after beating allcomers in the Stage 18 Time Trial.

Drugged?

-Brian

brian.c at lifescience.ie

According to the study one in six people of European decent carry two copies of the variant and compared to people with no copies of the gene had a 70% risk of obesity and could be an average of 3kg heavier.

However a more recent study has suggested that the effects of the variants can be counteracted with physical exercise. The research concluded that a person with both variants of the gene would have to burn an extra 900 kilocalories a day to offset the possible weight gain. The average heighted Irish male at 5 foot 9.8 inches, is considered obese at 15 stone (30.3 BMI). Therefore to burn 900 kilocalories is approximately equivalent of walking from the Guinness Brewery to the O2 Arena 3 times, 11.3km or playing a 90 minute game of football every day….

The study also showed that people that had variants of the gene and an average physically active life showed no sign of the effects.

-niamh